Synology NAS Network Backup to Windows Using DeltaCopy and rsync

Synology DSM 4.2 Backup and Restore Task Wizard (rsync)

Synology DS NAS devices have native functionality within Synology DSM to perform network backup to another Synology NAS, Amazon S3, or a rsync server to place the target files. I wanted to backup the files on the NAS onto my Windows installation using the DSM Backup and Restore task.

rsync is a protocol with an open-source command-line utility made for Unix-like systems. On Windows, the freeware program DeltaCopy makes running the rsync server service quite easy. But there were some hoops to hop through to get it working as desired, as it does have some limitations, including:

• the lack of unicode character support (cygwin)
• failure with file paths longer than 255 characters long (rsync)

The authors of DeltaCopy recommend replacing the cygwin library with a patched version to fix the problem of unicode characters, but in my usage this did not fix the more the crippling feature, which was was the 255 character short file path limitation. There is an easy workaround to both issues by using the rsync 3.0.6 Windows binaries compiled by Thomas Döring, placing the files in the DeltaCopy installation folder and replacing the files there.

The Synology network backup task fails with an error message when it runs into a problem from within DSM. To actually diagnose the issue, DeltaCopy’s rsync configuration has rsync logging disabled by default, so it must be turned on if you wish to find out what is actually happening. Within the DeltaCopy installation folder, the rsync configuration file is named ‘deltacd.conf’. You can add arguments to the configuration parameter ‘log file’ to debug any issues with the server. Refer to rsyncd.conf documentation for details.

DeltaCopy rsyncd.conf with logging enabled

Now you may wonder why we should bother with installing DeltaCopy at all, when the actual binaries for the rsync server get replaced anyway. The role of installing DeltaCopy is for ease of configuring the Windows service, rsyncd.conf from the ‘DeltaCopy Server’ GUI. You can achieve the desired results with the rsync 3.0.6 binaries alone if you are willing to write the configuration file and run the rsync server daemon yourself, which isn’t too hard either.

If you want to get rid of DeltaCopy completely, the uninstall process does not remove the Windows service it created on my machine. You have to use an elevated command prompt to delete the service yourself.

Steps to get this working:

1. Download DeltaCopy and rsync 3.0.6 respectively
2. Install DeltaCopy
3. Extract rsync 3.0.6 files into DeltaCopy’s installation folder
4. Run and configure DeltaCopy Server, installing the service with a local administrator account and creating a backup module (folder) that the service has permissions to read/write to. Synology requires that a username and password is set for the folder.
5. Open the rsync TCP port (873)  inbound port within Windows Firewall as an inbound rule (Windows Firewall with Advanced Security). It is important to ensure that the network adapter active profile matches the one for the rule under the ‘Advanced’ tab.
6. Test the connection from the Synology DS Backup & Restore page.

Tested with Windows 8 64-bit (DeltaCopy 1.4 by Synametrics, rsync 3.0.6 by Thomas Döring), Synology DS212J (DSM4.2).

Buried in Smartphones Hardware Specifications for 2013

Smartphone hardware has been progressing fast, but this year, we are starting to see more new confusing things regarding hardware specifications. It is turning into what the PC market has been like for years, where most people have stopped caring about the specifications because there is such an overwhelming amount of information out there. Instead of hard specifications such as clockspeeds and bandwidth, people care most about what’s on the surface and branding.

For PCs, you want an Intel i5 or i7. Some people might know how many cores a processor might have, and rarely someone might know the clockspeed. You won’t find many people who know the actual processor names. For phones, people only know devices on a model name basis. For the majority, these hard specifications no longer make an impact on how they use their computing devices on a daily basis, and they stopped committing their minds processing the excess of information. The first thing people talk about is how big the screen is, how good the things, and maybe the storage. After that, they might count the number of cores it has or how many megapixels the camera gives them. This is also how manufactures get away with getting rid of the user replaceable battery, and concealing the whole thing in tape so it can never be repaired.

In 2013, the smartphone is really converging into the same pattern, where users see less and less benefit with getting the best hardware on the block. Qualcomm has already done their homework and is working to push Snapdragon as a branded platform, trying to emulate Intel’s success at marketing over the years. Compared to the likes of Nvidia and Samsung, Qualcomm stands out because they have started to market the Snapdragon brand as a complete platform, not just as a single application processor, and are one of the few manufacturers capable of doing so. At the end of the day, this mess isn’t necessarily good news for end-users, because more marketing doesn’t really equate to better products at all, and maintaining the proper balance here is a fine line to tread.

Here is a short list of some hardware specifications for computer geeks to know about that will get buried this year:

CPU:

• ARM Cortex-A15/Cortex-A7 big.LITTLE 4×4: being called octacore everywhere when it isn’t designed to run with more than 4 at any given time
• ARM Cortex-A7 quadcore: this isn’t expected to perform that much better than a pair of old Cortex-A9s, but can have good power efficiency
• ARM Cortex-A9 r4p1: a new revision that should bring about similar performance to what Qualcomm is squeezing out of Krait, coming the second half 2013
• Intel Atom: a single core does as well as several ARM-based ones, but Intel isn’t keen on selling cheap chips
• Fabrication process: hopefully your next application processor was fabricated at either 28 or 32 nm, because everything else is ancient by now

Other:

• LPDDR3 vs LPDDR2: LPDDR3 bringing significant power savings and graphical performance improvements with the increased memory bandwidth, but Samsung might be the only
• one using it since  they make these
• Baseband envelope tracking: expected to bring significant power savings to celluar radio
• Inflated screen resolutions: resulting in poor gaming performance, despite all the ravings about how much PPI you can squeeze out of a screen
• Shrinking internal storage:  some manufacturers pushing a device with 16GB of internal storage all the way down to just 60% at 9GB (Samsung Galaxy S4)
• GPU performance: this is a mess I have not spent a lot of time looking at, but a lot of things can go wrong here with graphically intensive applications
• RAM: this has always been an issue ever since the G1, since manufacturers count memory allocated for crucial components such asthe GPU and radio chipset and unavailable to the operating system in this count. With larger screens that do more graphically intensive work, you need more RAM for the GPU. This so far hasn’t been a big issue though since Android is pretty efficient at managing lack of memory.
• Storage technologies: we never see any information regarding to this, but it matters. Look for those IO benchmarks when considering your next purchase.

Related:

• Chipworks – Inside the HTC One: http://www.chipworks.com/blog/recentteardowns/2013/03/28/inside-the-htc-one/
• Anandtech – NVIDIA Tegra 4 Deep Dive,  The Cortex A9 r4p1: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6787/nvidia-tegra-4-architecture-deep-dive-plus-tegra-4i-phoenix-hands-on/3
• Anandtech – Qualcomm’s Next-Gen Krait400 & 300: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6568/qualcomm-krait-400-krait-300-snapdragon-800
• Samsung – Samsung Announces Production of Industry’s First 2GB LPDDR3 Mobile Memory, Using 30nm-class Technology: http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/news-events/press-releases/detail?newsId=12061
• Anandtech – ARM Cortex A7: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4991/arms-cortex-a7-bringing-cheaper-dualcore-more-power-efficient-highend-devices
• ARM big.LITTLE: http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/biglittleprocessing.php

What is BusyBox for an Android user?

When a phone is rooted, one of the most common things to do after rooting is the installation of the BusyBox binary, prior to running any applications that require root privileges.

To make sense of this, it is necessary to have a brief understanding of what BusyBox is. BusyBox is a collection of powerful command-line tools in a single binary executable that can be run for UNIX based systems, including Android. The collection of tools available depends on how the BusyBox binary was built, and the source code is GPLv2 open-source, available from http://www.busybox.net/.  Many of the tools don’t do anything useful without elevated root privileges as in a rooted Android device.

Many Android applications that require root privileges use BusyBox from the command-line extensively. Some of the utilities are powerful enough to severely alter your device, such as the ability to write data directly any partition on your device. Many third-party firmware packages including Cyanogenmod utilize BusyBox extensively and already come with prebuilt with it, so users should be aware of consequences if making any modifications to the existing installation of BusyBox, by themselves of from one of many pre-packaged Play Store applications.

Keeping it on your device usually isn’t going to be a problem, but keep in mind that this tool can be destructive for your device and can make your device open to vulnerabilities compared to a stock shipping device. If you use the command-line a lot, you probably know what it is already and want to keep it installed.

Quick Reference – Viewing the Android Platform Source Code

One of the best things about developing on Android is the availability of the source code of the operating system itself. It means that developers don’t just have a blackbox to work with as with other operating systems.

Downloading the entire source code for the Android operating system can be time consuming depending on your internet connection, and building times depend on your computer’s processing power. For the typical develop who is just curious about the code in general without having to commit to downloading the whole thing, Google has made most of their code web viewable.

The main code repository is found at https://android.googlesource.com/. It is partially mirrored at Github as well. There are also many alternate mirrors out there.

Of all the code that have been made available, it is platform/frameworks/base that contains most of the relevant code for most Android application developers.

Another place to look is in everything preceded by packages/apps, which translate to applications compiled as APKs and deployed to the system partition. Taking a quick glance at the manifest file and string resources will help figuring out which packages do what. Some of these packages use hidden APIs unsupported by the Google distributed SDK, including the Launcher application. It is still possible to build these applications into work apps as described here (Stackoverflow).

Adobe Flash Player Official Installation Package for Sideloading

Adobe Flash was removed from the Android Play Store a while ago, but Adobe has actually continued to make it available for sideloading as an APK. However, they have made the files a little more difficult to find.

For future reference: Archived Flash Player Versions

Note that there are different versions for Android 4.x, and older versions of Android (2.2-3.x).

New Command Line Tool ‘settings’ in Android 4.2

There is a new binary shipping with Android Jellybean 4.2, which can be used to directly read/write to the system settings provider, accessible via command line.

This tool also makes it easy to change system settings using shell commands (Github source). Since adb is run as a system process, using ‘adb shell’ allows full read/write. If these commands are run from within an application, it requires the appropriate permissions unless it is being run with elevated permissions (root).
settings
usage: settings [--user NUM] get namespace key
settings [--user NUM] put namespace key value
'namespace' is one of {system, secure, global}, case-insensitive
If '--user NUM' is not given, the operations are performed on the owner user.

Corresponding keys can be found in the frameworks core Settings.java (Github source).

It can be used to get system state without explicit API calls. For example, change screen brightness to 200 (1-255):

settings put system screen_brightness 200

Privacy Policy for My Apps Without Statistics

I do not externally collect any information about you or your usage patterns.

THE SERVICES AND SOFTWARE ARE PROVIDED “AS IS”, AT YOUR OWN RISK, WITHOUT EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF ANY KIND. WE ALSO DISCLAIM ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. I will have no responsibility for any harm to your computer system, loss or corruption of data, or other harm that results from your access to or use of the Services or Software.

This privacy policy was last updated on December 4, and may change from time to time without further notice. It is your responsibility to ensure that you understand the terms of this Privacy Policy. You should periodically check this page for any changes to the current policy.

My Accessibility Applications for Android

Here are some accessibility applications I wrote, available on the Android platform via the Google Play Store under the Productivity category. Please note that some of these applications are version or hardware specific, and may not be available for download for your device.

All these applications are free to download from the Google Play Store.

Plane Mode Tweaker

Description: Enables or disables WiFi and/or bluetooth while in airplane mode.

Also affects airplane mode triggering of WiFi and/or bluetooth. Particularly useful for disabling cell radio hardware while maintaining network connectivity.

Target: Android 2.1 and up

No Long-Press Call

Description: Disables functionality of performing a long-press on the call button.

A hardware call button is available on older Android devices, as well as bluetooth headsets. Default Android behavior will result in launching of the voice dialer app or other applications assigned to this intent. This may vary depending on the manufacturer. As most newer devices are lacking the the call button, I have elected to make it unavailable past Android 2.3.7.

Target: Android 1.6 – 2.3.7

No Long-Press Search

Description: Disables functionality of performing a long-press on the search button.

A hardware call button is available on older Android devices, as well as bluetooth headsets. Default Android behavior will result in launching of the voice search app. This may vary depending on the manufacturer.

Target: Android 1.6 and up

FontUp

Description: Allows changing of Android system font size permanently.

Google has made this functionality available since Android 4.0, but not all manufacturers have made this available. Original Android sizes for reference: 85% (tiny), 100% (normal), 115% (large), and 130% (huge). This application actually adds a few more to pick from: 55%, 70%, and 145%. This application may result in some application layout issues. I personally recommend setting a size of 145% for users with poor eyesight. Some manufacturers have not made this feature available, or have customized Android in such a way that it does not take advantage of this setting. System menus, stock user interface elements are affected system-wide by this setting.

Target: Android 4.0 and up

Lockscreen Policy

Description: Disable widgets and/or camera access on the lockscreen.

Starting from Android 4.2, the lockscreen includes widgets and a camera interface from the lockscreen. Both of these features are accessible before disengaging the lockscreen. This application allows the user to disable one or both of these features. While this does reduce functionality of the lockscreen, it simplifies it and makes the device easier to use. (Formerly named Lockscreen Features Policy)

Target: Any Android 4.2 device

Life with Windows 8 Begins

Took the plunge to update Windows 8. The upgrade from an install of Windows 7 took about 3 hours total, and preserved all my Windows 7 applications.

A List of Some Apps to Check Out

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list. Microsoft Store isn’t so great at application discover at the moment.

• General (some of these are region specific, US/UK)
  • Reddit To Go! – fully featured Reddit reader
  • News Bento – excellent RSS news feed reader
  • NBC News
  • BBC News
  • Al Jazeera
  • Reuters Video news
  • News Republic
  • Appy Geek
  • Engadget
  • TG Daily
  • XE Exchange
  • Allrecipes
  • Urbanspoon
  • Skitch
  • FlightAware
  • TuneIn Radio
  • EBay
  • Wikipedia
  • Skype
• Canadian apps
  • CBC news
  • CTV news
  • TSN
  • Canoe
• Chinese (for international Chinese users, anyway)
  • Baidu FM
  • PPTV
  • PPStream
  • Doumi music
  • Hong Kong Toolbar
  • MagV
• Christian
  • Holy Bible Reader
  • Bible by YouVersion

Post-Upgrade Problems and Resolutions

• Google Chrome was having issues, and I had to upgrade to beta to resolve the quirks the metro version had. I’m currently on 23.0.1271.52 beta-m, which doesn’t have a separate desktop and metro mode. Google talk plugin didn’t work, and my tabs were freezing up.
• Foobar2000 (I was on 1.0 something) also didn’t migrate over successfully. I had to reinstall it from scratch.
• Thinkpad X200T specific problem: camera
  • the Windows 7 driver no longer works. As of this writing, Lenovo has a driver called the ‘Integrated Camera Driver for Windows 8′. It’s a beta driver that worked fine with my laptop. Without this driver, the camera driver is installed, but apps will not recognize it. (File win8beta_g1c811ww.zip, Link http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloads/detail.page?&DocID=DS028387)
  • in-box drivers from Windows Update are older than what’s available from Lenovo (Conexant 20561 4.92.12.0, Link http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail.page?LegacyDocID=MIGR-73721). I had issues with microphone detection with the in-box drivers, which are 4.92.10.0.
  • GM45 display graphic drivers for Windows 7 from Lenovo (8.15.10.2555, from Link http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloads/detail.page?DocID=DS001289), which are better than the in-box ones for things such as OpenGL support and LCD backlight range. Intel is not supporting this graphic chipset, so the Windows 7 drivers are the best for the device.

Tips and Tricks

Here are some notes I took for using Windows 8, beyond the usual stuff

• Quick Logon with pin password - Microsoft forces you to log into a Live account to use many of its services, such as the app store. This forces you to have a password on your account, and I haven’t found a way around this yet. However, if you setup a ‘Pin’ password, the logon process is pretty fast. If you set a single number password (0000, for example), you can just hold ’0′ at the logon screen, and you will logon automatically.
• Keyboard shortcuts
  • Win+Tab – metro app switcher (where desktop is treated as a single app)
  • Win+C – charms panel
  • Win+D – go to desktop
  • Win+I – settings panel
  • Win+Q – searches apps (or pulls up the app specific search)
  • Win+W – searches settings
  • Win+F – searches files
  • Win+X – administration menu
  • Win+T – bring up desktop view, bring up the task bar, and toggle through items there
  • Win+B – bring up the notification tray in desktop view (I haven’t really found a good use for this yet tbo)
• Quickly launch any app
  • Bring up the start panel, start typing the name of the app, and press enter
• Windows Update
  • any actual update is still configured through the desktop mode control panel one. The Metro style windows update is very limited and doesn’t let you do anything except for update checking. If you want to install anything, you need to run the one from the control panel in desktop mode.
• SSD settings to check
  • Disk defrag schedule was still enabled on my upgrade install, so remember to check this
  • even with drive indexing off, Windows Indexing was still running. You need to turn the service off completely.
  • Intel SSD toolbox also recommended that superfetch needed to be turned off
  • Hybrid boot is not necessary ideal for SSD life. Also called fast startup.
• UAC
  • You can still turn this off without ill effects, because this is still pretty annoying
• Windows Smartscreen
  • If you don’t like the idea of sending off data to Microsoft every time you install something, keep this off
• Video playback support
  • Most versions of Windows 8 do not come with codecs. CCCP and VLC are good alternatives for video playback, and still work fine
• Solid color lockscreen backgrounds
  • To achieve this, you need aa picture with a solid color. Microsoft hasn’t really made this easy.

Accessing Worldwide Apps

I’ve got quite some apps installed right now. The most important thing to know regarding this is that the apps available are dependent on the region you select, which you can change from the Region applet in Control Panel.

Most apps are available in the United States. Canada and the United Kingdom might be of interest of you depending. For Chinese users, remember to look at China and Taiwan as well.

Windows 8 Release Preview First Look

Over the weekend, I tested Microsoft Windows 8 Release Preview on my family’s HP Compaq 2710p tablet.

I go over the setup and some details about use in this post.

The Setup

The Hardware

The tablet was originally released from 2007, and came pre-installed with Microsoft Windows Vista and came with Windows XP Tablet Edition installation media. We have had the tablet since about 2009.

Here are the key specifications of interest:

• Intel Core2Duo Dual-core U7600 @ 1.2 GHz
• 2GB RAM
• 80GB 4200 rpm hard drive
• Wacom pen stylus
• 12.1″ display at 1280×800 resolution

Installation

The ISO image for Windows 8 Release Preview was copied to a USB key using the Windows 7 USB Download Tool. The downloaded file itself was 3 GB in size for the English US 64-bit version.

Installation time was over an hour, and I chose not to preserve any files from the existing Windows 7 installation on the device.

Almost all hardware was detected right away without major issues, except for the built-in SD/MMC card reader. Vista 64-bit drivers were installed and seem to work just fine.

Post installation, Windows 8 has used 40GB of the 75GB available on the hard drive.

Drivers

The boot logo has the wrong aspect ratio before entering Windows GUI, probably at 1024×768. The resolution was also 1024×768 during initial startup, but it resolved itself upon detecting the correct drivers, but this was post-installation. As a result, the pen input was thrown off even though it was properly detected as a pen input device.

The Intel drivers that come with Windows 8 do not allow for 180-degree and 270-degree rotation in ‘Display Options’. Installation of Windows 7 drivers corrected this limitation.

Using Windows 8

Metro Start Screen – Welcome to your Windows 8 Home Screen

Metro is the name of the touch-based interface found in Windows Phone 7+ and now also in Windows 8. It has minimalistic rectangular tiles, which currently can be sized to a 1×1 square or a 2×1 (2 wide) rectangular tile. The tiles are capable of showing live information. Right-clicking on the tiles brings further actions.

To learn more about Metro style apps, see Microsoft’s article here.

The Metro start screen replaces the start menu found in Windows since Windows 95, but it is more than that. It also replaces the traditional legacy Windows desktop as the start screen of any device, interacting with the user once the new ‘lock’ screen is dismissed. It is effectively your home screen and is now the central hub for all your Windows activities. In prior versions of Windows, the desktop was this central hub. This really is like how the iOS or Android home screen works.

A mouse right-click on an empty area brings up the application specific Metro app bar, from the top and/or the bottom of the display. This menu is not available in all applications. This is similar to the Android menu button prior to Android 3.0. There is no way to tell if this exists in an application until you try to bring it up.

One problem with the start screen is that all shortcuts installed to the start menu during application setup now install into the start screen instead. I can foresee this becoming quite a problem with legacy Windows applications.

The Start Menu is replaced by the Charms Bar

The Charms Bar replaces the Start Menu found in previous versions of Windows. When activated, it also shows the date and time.

• Search: this is like typing a search string when opening the Start Menu
• Share: you can now get social and share to internet services such as Facebook
• Start: opens the Metro start screen
• Devices: Things like your USB drive, and probably your Windows Phone are supposed to go here
• Settings: Application specific settings are accessed by opening the Charms Bar Settings. The contents of settings varies depending on which application is in the foreground within Metro. From here you also have quick access to various controls such as brightness, volume, WiFi, and a shortcut to Metro’s PC Settings screen (shown below)

Desktop Mode

Desktop mode is now delegated to look like an ‘app’ within the Metro start screen. Microsoft wants to allow users to use Metro without having to navigate into the legacy desktop mode.

The desktop mode returns the user to the legacy interface found in previous versions of Windows, but minus the start button. The notification tray is still in the same location, and applications launched within desktop mode appear in the bar at the bottom and are represented by icons as in Windows 7.

Much of the functionality of Windows is still in the desktop mode of Windows 8, such as the Control Panel and Windows Explorer.

Although you can configure some of your settings from Metro, much of the configuration settings still reside in the desktop mode of Windows 8. If you know your way around Windows 2000, XP, Vista, or 7, you’ll feel right at home in desktop mode. 

Switching Between Applications

There are actually two different application switchers in Windows 8. One for Metro, and the other for Windows. Quite frankly, I really hope Microsoft fixes this before they ship.

The original Windows application switcher works like how it used to, and is still brought up with ‘Alt-tab’ from a keyboard. It shows all open applications. This list is no longer the same as the list of applications shown in the desktop mode dock, because it also shows applications that are not available from desktop mode, as shown below.

The Metro application switcher shows a list of your recently opened Metro applications. I am not sure if this is a bug, but it appears that the list does not actually represent what is currently open. It seems to be a history of what applications have opened instead. Ending a Metro task from the Task Manager does not remove an application from this list. This is now ‘Win-Tab’ from the keyboard, replacing Aero Flip. Right-clicking on the items allows you to remove them.

Navigating Metro with the Mouse – Hot Corners

If you use a mouse input device with Windows 8, you can use the ‘hot corners’ at the corners of the screen to activate the ’Charms bar’, ‘Start’, and ‘Metro app switcher’.

• Top left corner click – opens last app (a preview is shown of last app opened)
• Move to top or bottom left corner and drag to opposite vertical corner – opens Metro app switcher
• Bottom left corner click – opens Metro start screen
• Move to top or bottom right corner and drag to opposite vertical corner – opens Charms bar

Navigating Metro with the Stylus and Touch – Edges

Mouse and pen/touch Metro navigation is different on Windows 8. This is not the case for pen-input devices.

Your basic navigation gestures for touch and pen based devices in Windows 8 are as follows:

• Drag top edge down to bottom – close app
• Flick top or bottom edge – bring up in Metro application specific app bar
• Flick right edge – bring up Charms bar
• Flick left edge – switch to last app
• Flick left edge, and flick back towards the edge in one motion – bring up Metro app switcher

For pen-input devices, you must use edge activation just like you would for touch-based input devices. This took me a bit of time to figure out, because Microsoft hasn’t gotten around to writing a tutorial for Metro UI yet. Conceptually, touch and mouse input devices have different user interactions defined in Windows 8, and you just have to wrap your mind around this. Fortunately, this makes a lot more sense as you start to use the operating system.

With Wacom drivers, it is possible to configure the side button to allow for stylus panning. This may be a better option than the default Windows configuration of ‘right-click’ for some, but I found that it didn’t work everywhere.

Stylus Calibration

Pen calibration is a must in Windows 8 in order to trigger the edge actions, as the actions are only triggered within a couple of pixels of the edge of the screen. It took me a few tries to get the calibration to work just right with the Wacom stylus, which do have a tenancy to be difficult to calibrate for the edges of the screen in my experience with stylus tablet PCs. I was not asked to calibrate my stylus during first boot from Metro, but maybe Microsoft will get around to doing this by the time RTM is around.

If you have used Windows Vista or 7 before, the Tablet PC Settings contains the stylus calibration, which is located in the Control Panel from desktop mode. If you are starting Windows 8 and have no edge activation, it renders the pen very difficult to use for much of anything.

One gripe I have with the pen in Windows 8 so far is that it remains in ‘pointer’ mode rather than ‘touch’ mode, and as a result, I cannot pan-and-scroll using the pen. While Windows 8 did not get rid of the scroll-bars even in Metro style applications, the scroll-bars are thin and difficult to grab with a stylus, and impossible to use if your stylus has not been calibrated.

Touch and Stylus Input in Metro

This area has seen an enormous improvement since Windows 7. The excellent handwriting recognition from prior versions of Windows is still there, but the new snap-to-bottom keyboard has is larger, more easy to use, and features multiple layouts (split keyboard, full keyboard, and minimal keyboard styles). Multi-language input support (tested for Chinese) works great as well.

The only gripe I had with inputting text with the pen on Windows 8 is that the keyboard will refuse to hide itself at times, so I have moved the bottom dock bar to top of the screen to access to ‘Touch Keyboard’ button manually.

Metro Applications

I found performance on Windows 8 Release Preview to be as good as if not better than Windows 8 for legacy Windows applications such as Microsoft Word, Excel, and Google Chrome. The animations were smooth throughout the system, despite the very old Intel graphics on the device. The start screen comes up instantly when pressing the Windows key, and all both hot spot and edge activation respond well.

However, Metro UI applications are slow and take a while to launch on my PC, but this may be attributed to the slow hard drive. On my network with a standard 6-Mbit DSL connection, content does take a while to load as Metro applications rely more on a fast internet connection.

As of this writing, the number of Metro UI applications in the Microsoft Store are quite lacking. You will need to have a Microsoft Live account to access the app store of Microsoft. There are some promising applications right now, and Microsoft has created a few of their own such as Maps and Skydrive, but hopefully the selection becomes significantly better by the time Windows 8 is actually launched. The design of Metro makes apps a real pleasure to look at.

Things I Haven’t Discussed

• Metro notifications
• Microsoft service integration
• A lot of other new features Microsoft added to Windows 8

First Look Ending Thoughts

Windows 8 is Microsoft’s answer to the threat of new smart devices in Android and iOS based touch devices. It is an amalgamation of the legacy Windows desktop interface and the new touch based Metro UI optimized for touch devices.

While it will throw off a lot of users who upgrade from previous versions of Windows, it is a necessary evolutionary step for Microsoft in order to modernize its operating system. In doing so, it is taking a huge risk in making the legacy desktop interface secondary to the Metro UI touch interface. By focusing on Metro, the desktop experience on Windows feels disjointed and broken.

I’m not entirely sure if consumers will appreciate what Microsoft is forcing upon them, as much as I like Metro so far. Windows 8 feels very much like an unfinished product. I believe that it is a stepping stone version of Windows rather than one which will succeed, as the hardware is simply not there to optimize the touch experience necessary for Windows 8 to be successful. This was partially why Windows Vista failed to appeal to consumers when the hardware wasn’t up-to-par in performance.

I plan to purchase at least one copy of Windows 8 because of the low $40 cost to upgrade announced by Microsoft, but I find little reason to update for the majority of users out there. Metro UI does not offer much for users who don’t have touch or pen input support.

To take full advantage of Windows 8, I would recommend the following minimal hardware specifications:

• Dual-core CPU 1 GHz or more (Core2Duo equivalent)
• 2GB of RAM
• Minimum of 64GB SSD (if no files are to be stored on the device), 80GB recommended, 128GB optimally
• 1024×768 resolution or better display (since Metro UI does not support lower resolutions)
• Touch-screen
• Keyboard
• Mouse based input device

This is probably my last write-up on Windows 8 for a while. I’m sure many others will cover Windows 8 in greater detail as it launches later this year.